Growing Up Sucks Balls

When I was younger, I used to have this huge desire to grow up. To do everything everyone older than me did--going to concerts, driving, traveling, staying up past 11 p.m. and all the other things I couldn't do as a child. I would sometimes throw temper tantrums screaming "I CAN'T WAIT TO GROW UP!"

Oh how wrong was I...

                                                 photo credit: Ahoova via photopin cc
                                                 (Nope...not me. I'm a woman)

It was foolish of me to think that my life would be easy and to overlook the very things that stress me out.
Bills, bills, and more bills. As a child, I did not comprehend the way of life, to me it was just a world of playgrounds, cartoons, swings and food. Nothing else existed to me and on occasions I would throw hissy fits when I didn't get what I wanted. Of course, as I started to grow up, so did my responsibilities.

Below you will find the growth of my responsibilities:

Age: 1
Responsibilities: Pooped, ate and slept.
Job: Cried

Age: 6
Responsibilities: Pooped, ate, slept, smiled and looked pretty.
Job: Eating McDonald's Fries.

Age: 10
Responsibilities: Pooped, ate, slept, annoyed brother, occasionally smiled and rarely looked pretty.
Job: Watched cartoons

Age: 13
Responsibilities: Annoyed brother, never smiled, hid from bullies, chores and observed (Yes...I still pooped, ate and slept).
Job: Referee for fights in my house

Age: 16
Responsibilities: Chores, homework, walking the dog, screaming, applying to colleges, pooped, ate, and slept.
Job: Breaking out of my house every so often.

Age: 20
Responsibilities: Gym, homework, driving, boyfriend, working, paying cell phone, rarely slept, looked pretty, and ate.
Job: Worked in Retail.

Age: 22
Responsibilities: Gym, homework, driving, working, paying several bills, rarely slept, dated, looked like a disaster and ate.
Job: I had temp. jobs (at least...I made them temp.)

Age: 25 (NOW)
Responsibilities: Gym, driving, working, pestering the mailman, paying A MILLION BILLS (SCHOOL LOANS....NOOOO!), rarely sleeping, looking alright, dealing with a few stubborn guys, snapchatting people, and  finding ways to make more money (yes yes yes I still poop and eat).
Job: Marketing and Business Development for a good company.

I must admit, looking at this list, I have come a long way from where I used to be, but the fact that I can't seem to pay off anything...is..well...ridiculous.

Thus, I have come to the conclusion that growing up sucks balls, a phrase that a friend used to say on a daily basis. A phrase I have come to know as:

sucks balls- An expression used when things are shitty (according to Urban Dictionary).

 While I do have a job that pays, I still do not make enough to pay off my credit cards, loans, car loan and everything else that is on a loan. So for the next few days I have gone Google "insane" and have spent a few days looking for ideas...

How to make money according to Google:

1. Become a gold digger
2. Sell your body to advertising companies so they can tattoo your forehead.
3. Become a moving billboard- wear ads on your shirt, use their pens and use your car to stick their ads on.
4. Sell items on Ebay (I have plenty going on...this can only get me so far, unfortunately).
5. Do another persons dirty work by joining a site that everyone seems to be on and have no chance of even getting that job to begin with.
6. Garage sale! (I have no yard and no garage...I live in a cave somewhere).
7. Pan Handling
8. Write Reviews (unfortunately this doesn't pay all that well...at all).
9. Sell your photography (I have yet to find someone who will buy any of it).
10. Sell your soul to the pawn shop (I don't even have gold or anything worth pawning).

I read plenty of other ideas that were well...a bit...disturbing. At some point I was waiting for someone to say that the best way to make money was by selling unicorn milk.

Gladly, there isn't anyone twisted enough to think of that, except for me. Maybe I should start selling unicorn milk, possibly do a false advertisement of how magical you'll feel in the mornings after drinking unicorn milk or how unicorn milk will make you sparkle just like the vampires in Twilight.

Unfortunately, I don't think unicorn milk can stop my responsibilities or pay all my bills...Growing up definitely sucks balls.

BALLS.

Hanny the coffee bean

(and yes I really had to emphasis the balls part).

Signs You *May* Be Turning French

After several months of pondering, and at the insistent elbowing encouragement from my pal King Stu at Invading Holland, I present to you a list of signs which indicate that you *may* be turning French.

-Your stomach has survived one of those five-hour long French dinners and lived through the cheese course.

-You actually have hosted one of those infinite dinners yourself.

-The thought of skipping lunch is UNACCEPTABLE. Got work to do? Too bad. Your stomach comes first.

-You unconsciously eat said lunch in multiple courses: entrée, plat, fromage, dessert and le p'tit café for last.


-You have finally achieved that perfect, elusive dietary balance which allows you to eat creamy/stinky cheeses, buttery croissants, crusty baguettes, sumptuous foie gras, and to imbibe copious amounts of wine while NOT gaining weight.

-You know very well that the humble potato is bread's sworn enemy on being the country's food favorite.

-You have a favorite cheese, which is no small task considering how the country is known for producing over 400 different cheeses.

-Said favorite cheese will always find a place in your fridge, along with a glass of moutarde and an ever-present jar of cornichons.

-You scoff at Spanish tomatoes and strawberries. And pretty much every other produce that doesn't come from France and its overseas regions.


-Before agreeing to an outing with friends, you first consult with your "agenda" to make sure you are free and therefore won't inconvenience anyone with last-minute cancellations.

-And you take out a pen from your ever-present "trousse" to write down said date.

-You make it a habit to carry several passport-sized photographs with you for identification and paperwork purposes.

-You always keep an ever-so-handy RIB (relevé d'identité bancaire) in your wallet for whenever you need to hand your bank account information over to a complete, but authoritative, stranger.

-When completing a file, it no longer surprises you when you are asked to provide more documents and photocopies than was previously required.

-Nor will you raise eyebrows to make photocopies of documents you could have sworn had already been provided.

-Seriously. You won't even bat an eye when hearing that the minimum delay for ANY legal documentation will take at least six weeks.


-You no longer break into cold sweats whenever you hear the SNCF's doon-DOON-doonoo chime in the train station over the worry that your train was delayed/cancelled/mysteriously abducted by aliens*.

BE AFRAID.

-You start to consider that any place that takes more than a three-hour drive is "far."

-You often opt to take a vacation within the country as opposed to travelling abroad because you reason that France's beauty is unparalleled and it is therefore pointless to go elsewhere**.

Nope. Not even Sherlock Holmes in the London Underground could surpass the wonders of France. 

-It's perfectly acceptable to have furniture that you would never have considered owning before, such as a combination bookcase/booze cabinet.

Booyah.

-You no longer giggle whenever you see a bidet.

-You actually get mildly peeved whenever you see a bathroom that has a toilet in it, instead of seeing the porcelain throne in a separate water closet.

-You have willingly used the dreaded "toilettes turques", a.k.a. the "WTF toilet," on more than one occasion.

-You once hated how French windows blocked all sources of light with the "volets." Now, you can't imagine life without shutters, particularly during those long summer days that start at 5 a.m.

-You've been lucky enough to go to a French wedding and managed to party for most of the night.

The lovely bride is my friend Emily.  The pink thing on my head is a fascinator.  

-You actually know someone who plays the accordion.

-You know very well that mentioning the Mont St Michel to someone from Brittany is a big no-no.

-You manage to find something to do on Sundays.


*When my mother came to visit me last year for Christmas, our train to head back to Paris was delayed, THEN cancelled. According to the SNCF message (which was preceded by the chime), this "inconvenience" was due to an "incident de personne" which happened to someone;"incident de personne" is often code for "suicide."

And I had purchased First Class tickets, too. Harrumph.

**New York City is the apparent exception.

The Little Mothereffin' Things that Get to Me

The title should be self-explanatory. If not, then I'll present you with a list of various annoyances that bring a frown to my face.

1) The fact that there is a trio of flies that are currently buzzing around my room. I have since opened the window to allow them with a means of escaping. Instead, those sand grain-brained bastards are too stupid to recognize when a window is WIDE OPEN and opt to hover or cling to the window's frame, not actually going back outside. They are just close enough to freedom without feeling the need to liberate themselves into the world, and it's enough to irk me with their incompetent fly ways.

2) The fact that I would like to cook some proper food this weekend, but the security code to enter the front door in the building where the kitchen is located has changed...and no one has bothered to inform me what that new code is. Hoorah.

3) The fact that weekends go by in the blink of an eye, and that the amount of work I have to do simply is does not balance out with my so-called "free time."

4) The fact that I purchased on Saturday a reduced-price bookcase/booze cabinet from the local LeClerc supermarket for 50 euros, which is right across the street from where I live. The only hitch is that I have absolutely no means of transporting it on my own and was thus left with no choice but to pay for it to be delivered.

On Wednesday afternoon, a.k.a., my free afternoon, between the vague hours of 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

And the price to have it delivered across the street? 40 euros. That's 90 euros total for my bookcase/booze cabinet.

5) Plus, the man who handled the bookcase/booze cabinet's transaction needed a lesson or two on friendly customer service. He probably thought that it would have killed him to smile.

6) I remind you: I literally live across the street from this LeClerc. Considering that I nearly paid double what the bookcase/booze cabinet was priced, they could have at least delivered the damn thing that same Saturday. Ugh.

7) Now one fly from the trio is attempting to become my friend by landing itself closer to my person, either next to me on the bed or right on my laptop's screen. I DON'T WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND, FLY.

8) No, don't come next to me. GO AWAY, FLY. You hear me????!!!! GO. AWAY.

9) In fact, the window is still wide open. Why don't you tell your fly buddies to just leave?

10) No. Instead, you opted to call over your other pals and have them hang out next to me. I recently showered and washed my hair, so I don't understand what the appeal about me is since I don't smell of poop.

11) At least, I don't think that I smell of poop. Perhaps these flies are trying to tell me something that I don't know...

12) The fact that this blog post is about me griping about flies and expensive delivery fees and how I can't even be bothered to provide an illustration with it.

I shall remedy that.

Here is a totally 100% accurate illustration about my delivery woes.

13) The fact that my cartoon was so utterly unimaginative and repetitive that it makes me want to draw something even more eccentric. Fat chance that will happen because I have to keep working.

14) The fact that I have remorse over having wasted time painting a wooden tissue box.

I don't even use tissues.

Barb the French Bean